Byakko... HM or EX ?

I know, I know, yet another elitist thread, but first, I don't feel at all like an hardcore raider. I downed O4S one week before 4.2 dropped, I progressed rather slowly on Deltascape, and my roster and I are casual to midcore raiders.

Yet, I really feel like Byakko EX really is Byakko HM. My first kill was with a PUG that went blind, and we killed it in 40 minutes, I did it first try with my roster after I spent... 1 or 2 min explaining the strat to them... It really lacks difficulty.

The fight is amazing, it's really entertaining, and so on, but I felt nothing when I killed him. Back in 2.2, when I killed Titan EX for the first time, I felt like I did something great. When I killed Byakko EX, I felt like I did a great fight, but not a hard one.

So yeah... maybe we need three difficulties, like Titan, Ifrit and Garuda had ?

I agree, also with savage, really. Have cleared O5 and O6S and it was meh all over again when clearing it. Like time we felt good about clearing the first two turns was A5 and A6S. Great stuff.

They do that, then I guarantee you'll be back here in a few months complaining how Byakko Nightmare is too easy, and we need a fourth difficulty tier. It never really ends.

Well, the only way it would is if they made it so hard you legitimately could not beat it. Because once you do, and get it on farm, it starts being easy again. Easy enough to run with all tanks, easy enough to run with 7 people to sell runs, etc.

People will just complain about everything. Forever. And beyond.

Good for you dude. Parties are being strict about it so I can't even join groups to try to down it yet because it's 340, and I'm only 334 (Partially because I don't like dropping gil bombs on stuff that will be replaced in about a week or so, as well as me spending 3200 tomestones on 2x new orchestron rolls). So seriously, good for you on clearing it and finding it too easy.

No matter the difficulty at this point just about, SOMEONE is gonna complain that it's 'too easy'. Don't like it like that? Join parties where you all handicap yourselves if you want more fun.

IMO it's around the same difficulty as Zurvan was when he was released. Not that hard, but still some mechanics that can cause a wipe if ignored. (Broken Seal in Zurvan / Expanding Orbs in Byakko) Would be harder if you couldn't cheese the 2nd tiger phase with tank lb3 and completely ignore all the mechanics in that phase. Pretty much like tank lbing the 2nd soar. I feel like it might be the same person who designed both fights. For most of the playerbase it is hard enough (Tons of people still die to Sweep the leg or eat balls like they are donuts), for people doing savage not really but I think the difficulty is set that way intentionally just like how people that can do ultimate the current savage difficulty is probably a bit easy for them.

You bring up Titan EX - may I ask you about Shinryu, bot EX and NM? Because thats the more recent primal here and you know what? People complained that that one was to difficult - and certainly not killed by a PUG-group within 40 minutes. So... have you killed that one as easly?
To be honest: I havent tried Byakko EX yet, but I'd be fine with an EX-fight thats a bit easier than Shinryu was.

You should also notice that the difficulty-mode we ditched since Ifrit, Garuda and Titan is the 4-man-mode, not the EX-mode.

Titan EX was a real nice female dog of a fight - for me at least aswell. But do you know why later EX-modes feel easier? Because we got better at the game, because we've been playing it for years. Oh and because we've got less lag now... again, I cant talk about Byakko or about the experience of anyone else, so I'll speak in general about mine: Back in 2.2 I had trouble getting out of an AoE, partly because of lag, partly because I was just to stupid to do it. Splitting up the boss in T1 and moving it across the battlefield was a challenge and I honestly believed I'd never be able to play anything but a tank during Titan-fights (since as tank you can just stand there and get your head beaten in). Today, I can solo that fight. Landslides arent an issue anymore and I use Tempered Will not to save my ass because I cant do a mechanic but to be able to ignore this wind-knockback-thing in Shinryu so I can dish out more damage.
Titan EX wasnt more difficult as a fight by itself - if we'd get that one today, it would be among the easier ones. Titan EX was bad because we were bad (and probably because of no saftey-net for getting knocked off, I'd like to have that back...).
I understand wanting to have that feeling again and a real challenge for yourself, but I'm not sure thats really possible - and if I think about how the battle with Titan was a battle with a boss, serious lack of skill and lag, I dont think I actually want that back...
Strictly mechanically speaking every EX-mode in HW and SB is more complexe than Titan EX is, as a fight.

EX primals were never that difficult to begin with barring a few fights like titan ex and thordan ex etc.

Only reason its 'not that hard' is because you can cheese through it with tank limit break.If it wasnt for this factor i guarantee that most clear parties would be still seeing enrages.
Would be interesting to see if they made that phase instant wipe you regardless of tank lb.I guarantee most would be on forums crying and saying it was too hard.

EX primals are traditionally intended to be the hardest content for casual players while also allowing a transition for raiding players into savage content. As far as that goes, Byakko Ex more or less does the trick with the consideration that hardcore players have already gone up to o8s in the first day.

I've definitely seen people make mistakes on that fight. What's funnier is that the worst players I run into in there seem to be players rocking full crafted sets that somehow even underperform compared to people below the ilvl requirement for it.

To be completely honest, I've slowly come to enjoy fun encounters over difficulty. It's usually not difficult for me, but for the others I play with (the community as a whole), it can be. Nothing it more frustrating than trying to explain something as simply as possible and the person not grasping the idea (or they forget it when the mechanic comes up). Also, I rather like the fact that HM and EX were not so different. In my opinion, this makes it not only easier to not mess up normal after only farming EX (how many times have I fallen off in Sophia HM, but do EX flawless), but can help the more casual/time constrained players to quickly get into the EX fight and clear it. Plus both versions of Byakko are fun.

Especially once things are on farm; I'd rather reflect on it and ask myself is this encounter fun? Well, I can at least say that is a yes with Byakko and Susano.

I like it....thordan ex was not fun at all when it first came out lol just a wipe fest and very frustrating so personally for me I also enjoy the fun fights over the extremely difficult ones....also if you think hard byakko is just the same as a certain primal in HW with the expanding circles and the split stack mechanic hint hint lol

Good for you. Meanwhile, I've yet to get into a clear party that actually clears because the average player is still having trouble with this fight... and because I don't have a static PUG's are whom i'm getting matched with. Been to enrage many multiple times now because DPS is dying too often or the tank forget to LB3 or people don't place Gale Force correctly or forget to avoid leg sweep.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

Only reason its 'not that hard' is because you can cheese through it with tank limit break.If it wasnt for this factor i guarantee that most clear parties would be still seeing enrages.
Would be interesting to see if they made that phase instant wipe you regardless of tank lb.I guarantee most would be on forums crying and saying it was too hard.

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So basically just remove tank LB completely, we need more content that can use Tank LB not less, not every encounter needs be designed around DPS using the LB, I think great you can ignore all that extra stuff in phase 2 thanks to a useful LB form tanks something that's very very rare in this game.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Umbra

So basically just remove tank LB completely, we need more content that can use Tank LB not less, not every encounter needs be designed around DPS using the LB, I think great you can ignore all that extra stuff in phase 2 thanks to a useful LB form tanks something that's very very rare in this game.

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Yep. Because of how situational tank LB is, it helps make it even more special when it's added. That doesn't need removing. If anything, we need fights where the mechanics can be dealt with using tank LB. Perhaps even add them to like a half-enrage type mechanic whereby if you're too slow on DPS, you can tank LB to pull through and open up a window of time to finish it (more time than what using DPS LB would save, significantly moreso). That way speedsters can still bumrush it with the DPS LB, and more casual players can use tank LB to keep the extra window open.

I think the overall fight is fine, but I wish the falling bit was harder. I hope this doesn't sound elitist when I say it puts me to sleep with how little there is to do. Is it the exact same as normal mode? You'd have to get hit by quite a few bubbles to actually die.

I think its important to have various levels of difficulty. Ultimate > Savage > EX Primals. We need content for all skill levels.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

You bring up Titan EX - may I ask you about Shinryu, bot EX and NM? Because thats the more recent primal here and you know what? People complained that that one was to difficult - and certainly not killed by a PUG-group within 40 minutes. So... have you killed that one as easly?

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Shinryu (NM anyway) is an inappropriate comparison. The complaints were largely centered around two factors that don't apply to Byakko: (a) it was a storyline fight; (b) it was a ridiculously large jump in difficulty relative to previous dungeons. Fix either of those, you have fewer justified complaints; fix both of them, you have no justified complaints.

I don't have a horse in this race, as I haven't tried Byakko nor do I plan to anytime soon. Just felt compelled to point out that you weren't comparing apples to apples.

Killed it with static.
Needed 4 more books.
Jumped into PF for 5 hours and only managed to get 1 book.

People are forcing the Tank LB3 start, wiping the party if two people died.
While I have done all, the fight can be cleared with 3 people dead. You have to simply work around mistakes and change starts if it is not working. But seems people either do it THIS way or wipe. They are not flexible.

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Only reason its 'not that hard' is because you can cheese through it with tank limit break.

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I'm 100% sure the strategy was intentional. It would have been trivial for them to make it such that the tiger would just flat out wipe you, regardless of tank LB, if you ignored it. They do this sort of thing in countless other fights in the game. They actively chose not to here.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

They do that, then I guarantee you'll be back here in a few months complaining how Byakko Nightmare is too easy, and we need a fourth difficulty tier. It never really ends.

Well, the only way it would is if they made it so hard you legitimately could not beat it. Because once you do, and get it on farm, it starts being easy again. Easy enough to run with all tanks, easy enough to run with 7 people to sell runs, etc.

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I can know a fight inside and out yet still consider it challenging based on my own standards. Cruise Chase remained challenging despite being significantly easier than say, Brute Justice. He didn't abruptly become braindead after I cleared it a handful of times. Beating a fight doesn't make the fight itself objectively easy. You keep attempting to make this correlation and it simply doesn't exist.

No one complained Nidhogg was "too easy." Why is it every single time someone complains how easy the game has become, you immediately rush to extreme examples? With a competent party, Byakko rolls over. Unfortunately, competency is asking a lot in PF.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

I'm 100% sure the strategy was intentional. It would have been trivial for them to make it such that the tiger would just flat out wipe you, regardless of tank LB, if you ignored it. They do this sort of thing in countless other fights in the game. They actively chose not to here.

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I guarantee you it wasn't. They simply don't adapt to our cheese strats. This same thing happened with Zurvan, thus creating the ever beloved "Skip Soar or disband" memes. The dev team has difficulty with the NA/EU mindset. JP does the mechanics almost as a show of respect. NA/EU only care about getting through the fight the fastest way possible. If we can break a fight, we're going to do it.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

You bring up Titan EX - may I ask you about Shinryu, bot EX and NM? Because thats the more recent primal here and you know what? People complained that that one was to difficult - and certainly not killed by a PUG-group within 40 minutes. So... have you killed that one as easly?

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They complained it was too hard due to '' too many mechanics''

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

Only reason its 'not that hard' is because you can cheese through it with tank limit break.If it wasnt for this factor i guarantee that most clear parties would be still seeing enrages.
Would be interesting to see if they made that phase instant wipe you regardless of tank lb.I guarantee most would be on forums crying and saying it was too hard.

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I survived the tank LB dog with 4x vuln stacks with crafted chest being the only 350 left side and no VIT melds. Only AST shield on me as far as I noticed. At least make the Vuln stacks mean something.

Use the party finder more. You just got lucky. I keep getting people dropping puddles wherever they feel, stacking in the wrong area and melees testing my heals with as many vulnerability stacks as they can.

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I guarantee you it wasn't. They simply don't adapt to our cheese strats.

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If you still somehow think fights are designed without the possibility of tank LBs in mind, even after Alexander, then I don't know what to tell you.

Anyone here got a really cheap bridge to sell?

If you are talking about the second dog, then yes the tank lb is a cheese strat its honestly pretty obvious to see it not being the intended way of doing it. After the first lunar dynamo dps can walk to the tiger to begin hitting him and even not keeping the extra uptime its still doable. People just prefer to tank lb cause either its too stressful for them or they rather just skip some mechs if they can which has been pointed out already.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

I can know a fight inside and out yet still certain it challenging based on my own standards.

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What extreme example? People are comparing Byakko ex to zurvan, and people were quite adamant about how easy Zurvan was, and how all you needed to do to skip soar was just know how to do a normal opener. There's a tendency for this playerbase to assume a lot of stuff in this game really is easy, and it's just the player's fault they don't complete it. The only time it was otherwise was alex 1-8 savage + thordan, which was generally hard enough that people couldn't say this, and many people couldn't clear at all.

So if they raise difficulty, either in time it gets the same treatment or it gets so hard that he won't say it's easy because he can't beat it or find the people to farm it. I mean, you are using the last fight in arguably the second hardest raid tier in this game as a good model of difficulty is pretty extreme in itself, isn't it?

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If you are talking about the second dog, then yes the tank lb is a cheese strat its honestly pretty obvious to see it not being the intended way of doing it.

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Looks fairly intended to me, otherwise the tiger could have easily just been made to wipe the party outright if it was ignored. They didn't.

They aren't shy about putting "do what we want you to, or die" mechanics in this game, and they avoided doing so here. Doesn't that tell you something?

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Originally Posted by Bernkastelx

If you are talking about the second dog, then yes the tank lb is a cheese strat its honestly pretty obvious to see it not being the intended way of doing it. After the first lunar dynamo dps can walk to the tiger to begin hitting him and even not keeping the extra uptime its still doable. People just prefer to tank lb cause either its too stressful for them or they rather just skip some mechs if they can which has been pointed out already.

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People use the tank lb because most of them arent good enough or geared enough to make the dps checks without it.While i welcome tank lb being used in fights.I dont think it should be used like this case as a crutch to carry people not really capable of the clear.

What strikes me with the different groups I had for farming this fight, is how unable players are to deviate from their A this role, B this role, C this role.
It may sounds a bit silly but when you look deeper into the problem, lies a biggest trouble of players being unable to adapt to change, hence a lot of lower skill players.
It is like if dps are no more C, they wont be able to do mechanics anymore.
On one of my tries, one player disconnected during the transition phase, so we lost lb 3. When the tiger spawned for the 2d time, all the others ones stuck to the LB tank strat...
Despite the fact that I advertised them : we have a deco, we won't have the lb for the tiger phase, you will need to focus it, they still stayed on the boss...
I think the lack of reactivity the reason why so much fights are perceived as difficult when they are not.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

People use the tank lb because most of them arent good enough or geared enough to make the dps checks without it.While i welcome tank lb being used in fights.I dont think it should be used like this case as a crutch to carry people not really capable of the clear.

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I cleared first day without the tank lb strat, it doesn't make the fight harder or more fun to do it that way. Either way you use an lb on the tiger, the smarter use of the lb is one tank oGCD while dps get to continue to burn down byakko, rather than dps limit break channel time and further wasted dps on an add.

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Originally Posted by Mavrias

I cleared first day without the tank lb strat, it doesn't make the fight harder or more fun to do it that way. Either way you use an lb on the tiger, the smarter use of the lb is one tank oGCD while dps get to continue to burn down byakko, rather than dps limit break channel time and further wasted dps on an add.

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It does make it slightly easier for worse groups. Deaths actually don't matter anymore if you just use tank LB. For some reason people can't dodge the columns sometimes or deaths during orbs. It makes it easier to recover. For better groups yeah not really, but people wipe due to the check there or a lot of people dead from previous stuff. You can still cheese it with 4 dps dead with just tank LB.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

What extreme example? People are comparing Byakko ex to zurvan, and people were quite adamant about how easy Zurvan was, and how all you needed to do to skip soar was just know how to do a normal opener. There's a tendency for this playerbase to assume a lot of stuff in this game really is easy, and it's just the player's fault they don't complete it. The only time it was otherwise was alex 1-8 savage + thordan, which was generally hard enough that people couldn't say this, and many people couldn't clear at all.

So if they raise difficulty, either in time it gets the same treatment or it gets so hard that he won't say it's easy because he can't beat it or find the people to farm it. I mean, you are using the last fight in arguably the second hardest raid tier in this game as a good model of difficulty is pretty extreme in itself, isn't it?

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Both are easy. You make it sound as though expecting people to know how to execute a proper opener is too daunting a task. If someone cannot perform the basics of their job, they have no business joining EX Primal parties. The fact Byakko is even easier only emphasises how dumbed down the game has become. That continually philosophy makes people increasingly complacent because what incentive is there to improve? They'll just keep making things easier.

You realize they can raise the difficulty and not mimic Gordias, yes? I purpose cited Nidhogg since he's hardly on the level of Midas or Gordias yet he will punish players for messing up. Claiming people will argue Byakko "nightmare" isn't hard enough is disingenuous. I don't want ridiculously hard primals. That isn't their purpose. I just don't want fights where barely nothing from normal changes and we're able to cheese through mechanics with tank LB. Frankly, the worst part about Byakko is the absurdly long intermission. It's a gimmick to pad out his fight since it would scarcely last five minutes otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

People use the tank lb because most of them arent good enough or geared enough to make the dps checks without it.While i welcome tank lb being used in fights.I dont think it should be used like this case as a crutch to carry people not really capable of the clear.

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No they don't. People tank LB because it's faster. Ignoring Hakutei allows for significantly higher uptime on Byakko. Why wouldn't you take advantage of that?

OK so first of all, I'm seeing a lot of posts in this thread talking about how ___________ isn't hard and whatnot, when they're judging by how easy it was for their highly coordinated static to clear. Like no, that's not how difficulty works.

Difficulty is measured by how hard it is to clear something with 7 other people you have never even met. So don't come here and talk about how "easy" Sephirot, Sophia, and Zurvan were, when you probably never even had the patience to join learning parties to see what that shit was actually like. Oh, "skip Soar or disband"? Yeah, should probably do that, since you most likely didn't even know how to do it without tank LBing through it. LMAO

ANYWAYS, when it comes to Byakko, I feel like he was relatively easy compared to Susano. But making him overly difficult is unnecessary. If you want hard content, there's already Savage for that. And if you think THAT'S easy, you can always take a trip back to Midas. c:

Byakko's diffiulty is based purely on how well SE's able to increase the skill of players overtime.

Byakko is easy because much like a majority of content aka dungeons, we are slowly taught mechanics over a large period of time and then those mechanics are integrated into tougher encounters with unique twist added to them.

The game only gets easier because that's the natural progression of things, you know to dodge telegraphs, to understand how certain AoE works, to run away when necessary, to avoid swipe damage, to share AoE dmg etc etc.

Now if you were to imagine Byakko without being aware of even 90% of the mechanics, it would be a lot harder but that's not the case. People go into the trial ready to understand each concept of the mechanic.

On top of that you have Byakko story mode that pretty much shows you all of Byakko's moves so you can be ready to react as long as you know the name of each skill used. It's all a learning process and the end results just go to show SE does a good job at teaching players to be ready for certain mechanics.

The falling part should have something else going on to make it interesting. Red orb patterns, white/black pairs like in Sophia ex, chains, blowing winds, knockbacks, etc. Otherwise the difficulty seems fine for an extreme and it's nice that tank LB is useful for a change.

Byakko ex is perfectly tuned and balanced for what it rewards. If the rewards were 365 weapons you could justify a higher difficulty but for 355? No, absolutely not. As someone that’s beaten O4S on content, I consider shinryu ex to be an overtuned piece of garbage fight with rewards not worth the effort. Byakko on the other hand? Again, for what it rewards you, the difficulty is perfect.

Edit: To clarify a bit more, I believe difficulty should be balanced out by the quality of reward you get. By the time you have the ilevel to do byakko (what's the min req.? 340 I think?) the weapon is only a marginal upgrade over what you should have by that point. Whereas for a fight like shinryu, the difficulty was far too high for a weapon barely better than a 330 tomestone weapon that we all knew would have an upgrade token from the 24m sooner or later. As such, I consider Shinryu to be completely not worth the effort for what you can get out of it and no, the dog/orchestrion/crafting item do not justify a higher difficulty, ever. Compare and contrast to byakko on the other hand where the slightly better weapon is worth getting because of the more reasonable difficulty even though folks will get a 370 or a 375 (if you raid) later on.

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Originally Posted by Airget

Byakko's diffiulty is based purely on how well SE's able to increase the skill of players overtime.

Byakko is easy because much like a majority of content aka dungeons, we are slowly taught mechanics over a large period of time and then those mechanics are integrated into tougher encounters with unique twist added to them.

The game only gets easier because that's the natural progression of things, you know to dodge telegraphs, to understand how certain AoE works, to run away when necessary, to avoid swipe damage, to share AoE dmg etc etc.

Now if you were to imagine Byakko without being aware of even 90% of the mechanics, it would be a lot harder but that's not the case. People go into the trial ready to understand each concept of the mechanic.

On top of that you have Byakko story mode that pretty much shows you all of Byakko's moves so you can be ready to react as long as you know the name of each skill used. It's all a learning process and the end results just go to show SE does a good job at teaching players to be ready for certain mechanics.

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I wholeheartedly disagree here.

Outside of Savage or Ultimate content, or certain EX fights, difficulty boils down to following the glowing icons that hint at what to do. Step out of the AoE indicator. Gather together on the ginormous arrow flashing over a party member's head. Don't position your tracking AoE to murder your tank. You may applaud SE for teaching players how to react to these mechanics - and I'll admit, they do a good job - but it isn't remotely the same thing as increasing the skill of players over time. There are two primary ways, in fact, that SE has caused player skill to drop, rather than rise, over time:

1. Mechanics are more obvious, yet less punishing. I'll always recall Garuda EX for this purpose; I helped out a newer friend who was queueing for it about six months back. We got a good-natured PUG, experienced old-timers who were looking forward to revisiting the fight. And it proceeded to kick our asses, mechanically speaking, for roughly a half-dozen attempts before we cleared. Why? Because mechanics weren't so obviously indicated, and because they were absolutely devastating when failed. Screw up the Suparna / Chirada separation, and you're done, almost immediately. Screw up the Satin Plume, and you're done. Accidentally kill the Spiny Plume, you're done.
   
   Titan EX is another great example. While his Landslide is visually obvious, it's also devastating; when you go off, you STAY off. It turns the fight into a war of attrition. Sure, it's unforgiving, but such is how you improve player skill. And his mechanics are still challenging today - more so than most existing fights. It was never an issue of not dodging telegraphs, not understanding more common forms of AoE, not understanding when to run away, or not understanding how to avoid swipe damage - it was just a bloody difficult fight. Which is something we see less of these days.
   
   Moreover, making mechanics obvious has a downside. It means players are more likely to freeze and get frustrated when different mechanics are introduced. See my example at the end for more detail on this.
   
2. Mechanics are the sole form of difficulty. This is probably the largest issue with FFXIV's difficulty, and why I believe SE has arguably caused player skill to deteriorate.
   
   Outside of Savage / Ultimate / certain EX content, there's little difficulty besides mechanics. There aren't any meaningful DPS checks anymore in regular content, a la Demon Wall back in the day. It's almost impossible to lose Enmity as a tank, a sad reality that has been true since the earliest days of ARR. It's almost impossible to fail at healing unless someone is going out of their way to be hit by more or less every AoE they can.
   
   This holds true in the "Expert" Roulette, overworld content, non-EX Primals (some EX ones too, for that matter), non-Savage Raids - everywhere except the hardest content aimed at players who, for the most part, tackle it with Static Parties.
   
   The net result of this is that players simply don't have a way to organically learn how to become better at their jobs. Sure, some people self-motivate anyway; they'll use third-party parsers and they'll jump into the theory-crafting to maximize their damage, optimize their rotations. But the general content of FFXIV provides nary an incentive -
   let alone a requirement - for all players to engage in this type of self-improvement.

I think an ideal example to wrap this together is The Royal Menagerie at the end of Stormblood. People shattered themselves upon the fight because the mechanics were relatively new, not as clearly telegraphed as others had been, and because there was a bit of a DPS check.

That fight was objectively easier than Titan EX, a fight that had been available to all players since before Stormblood was even in the planning stages. And yet, despite years of additional playtime, years of additional opportunity for skill growth, countless more fights to practice on, and 20 levels worth of new abilities giving us more tools than ever before, players struggled immensely with the fight.

To me, that's a sign SE has failed utterly at improving average player skill. Rather, they've simply accommodated poor performance into their difficulty balancing. It's important we not confuse the two.

Titan EX hasn't been done at min ilvl for 3 years or more. A lot of people came and went during that time, using it as any form of example is dumb. Everyone had to do Royal Menagerie, just to get to endgame, as the first phase of a popular new expansion launched. If you wanted to try to do an ex primal synched you often looked at hours of waiting in queue.

I don't agree with being knocked off the platform as a good mechanic to teach skill. It more or less just made one person sit out the fight for one single mistake, completely out of proportion to any other mechanic. We had a very nasty example of this in the hildebrand fight with ultros and typhon. Original fight meant that if any dps didn't get 3 wet plate stacks and punch typhon, you all wiped. And that meant on the second circle aoe phase both the dps and tank on ulty had to be perfect because one mistake meant a guaranteed party wipe. They quitely nerfed that, and I have yet to see anyone complain at all for the loss.

You also kind of limit difficulty with it. If you notice on all the "knock off" fights like that, you have to make it beatable with one tank. Otherwise the tanks can't make a mistake or they force restarts, compared to other jobs; Bismarck is an example of this. If your tank falls off pre dps check, you might as well jump off to restart. You end up making start/stop encounters because they become unrecoverable early.

Idk about difficulty. If you add hard dps checks and many oneshots and raid wipe mechanics, you're just going to do a lot more sorting of the playerbase, and make endgame as small as feast. The big fallacy I see here is that people assume everyone is going to stick with things if they become much more of a pain in the butt to do, because the people who want it harder would do so. But a lot would just skip the content instead.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

Only reason its 'not that hard' is because you can cheese through it with tank limit break.If it wasnt for this factor i guarantee that most clear parties would be still seeing enrages.
Would be interesting to see if they made that phase instant wipe you regardless of tank lb.I guarantee most would be on forums crying and saying it was too hard.

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Ding ding ding. I'm actually really hoping they patch this out so that parties where nobody breaks 4k DPS can't clear it by getting almost 20 seconds of free damage on the boss (also "no double jobs" is pretty frickin' annoying when you're an Astrologian, the class that can literally change their healing style to fit into any healer comp, including a comp with another Astrologian). I'm always sad to see non-melee-DPS LB use get punted to the side but I really do feel like being able to skip this aspect of it trivializes a big portion of the difficulty of the fight.

EDIT: I guess 3-3.5k is probably a more reasonable barometer since the boss has that long period of downtime.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

No they don't. People tank LB because it's faster. Ignoring Hakutei allows for significantly higher uptime on Byakko. Why wouldn't you take advantage of that?

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I respectfully offer the perspective that people are tank LBing both BECAUSE it's faster AND because people are so bad they'll meet enrage without that extra DPS on the boss. It's a crutch for players who don't do decent DPS and a speed method for players who optimize. I don't think they're mutually exclusive.